Obesity and related disease such as diabetes remain major health threats in western societies. In order to better understand the molecular regulation of metabolic processes involved in body fat regulation, numerous genetically and pharmacologically altered animal models are necessary along with an increasingly refined set of tools to characterize these models. We are requesting a 24 cage Integrated Mouse Energy Balance Analysis system. Key features are state-of-the-art open-circuit indirect calorimetry with high-speed gas sensors, and simultaneous and continuous monitoring of food and water consumption, locomotor activity, energy expenditure, body core temperature and heart rate. Importantly, it performs mouse metabolic phenotyping within a gradient of several environmental temperatures from cold exposure to the animals thermoneutral zone (where they need the least possible metabolic energy to cool or heat their organism). Also, this system includes a novel way to "clamp" food intake by smart software to allow feeding independent study of cell metabolism and energy expenditure. The key point of our proposal is that the requested system will allow to take energy metabolism analysis of mouse models as center parts of numerous grants and projects by the here listed major and minor users to an unprecedented level of technical sophistication that will allow for high- throughput generation of more specific, more detailed, more relevant and more scientifically and physiologically meaningful results. Directly related projects which would massively benefit from this shared instrument are focusing on direct regulation of energy metabolism by the CNS, gut hormone - brain interactions or inflammatory pathways known to also regulated energy metabolism. Ultimately, this instrument and its use for the numerous ongoing metabolism and obesity studies at the University of Cincinnati will facilitate progress towards a better understanding of obesity and diabetes.